TABLE OF CONTENTSPageIntroduction .................................................................................................................. 3I. The Terrifying Church Regime.............................................................................. 51. Compulsory membership ....................................................................................... 52. Psycho-terror ............................................................................................................. 73. A crime against humanity.......................................................................................124. The criminal responsibility of Dr. Ratzinger .......................................................14II. The Murderous Forbiddance of Condoms .......................................................141. The conflict ...............................................................................................................152. Obedience with fatal consequences ......................................................................163. A crime against humanity ......................................................................................184. The criminal responsibility of Dr. Ratzinger .......................................................19III. Joseph Ratzinger’s Patronage of the Sexual Crimes of the Clergy ............201. The worldwide sexual crimes of Catholic priests...............................................201.1 USA...........................................................................................................................201.2 Ireland .....................................................................................................................221.3 Germany .................................................................................................................231.4 Canada.....................................................................................................................241.5 Australia ..................................................................................................................251.6 Africa........................................................................................................................251.7 Prominent perpetrators ........................................................................................252. The cover-up strategy.............................................................................................282.1 The pontifical secret ..............................................................................................282.2 The practice of cover-up .......................................................................................292.3 The preferential treatment and reinstatement of the perpetrators ...............322.4 No end in sight .......................................................................................................352.5 A crime against humanity.....................................................................................382.6 The criminal responsibility of Dr. Ratzinger .....................................................41IV. On the Admissibility of the Proposed Charge...............................................44V. Summation ..............................................................................................................462In the name of and on behalf of1) ……………………………..2) ……………………………….3) ………………………………4) ………………………………..5) ………………………………..We hereby bring charges against Dr. Joseph Ratzinger and apply to theprosecutor of the International Criminal Court to initiate investigations againstthe accused and to examine him regarding the facts presented.

G r o u n d s

Introduction

The charges are directed against three worldwide crimes, which until now have not been denounced merely because they stemmed from an institution headed by the “highestdignitaries,” who appear to be far above criminal acts. The traditional reverence toward “ecclesiastical authority” has clouded the sense of right and wrong.If, by way of massive psychological pressure, a new religious group were to force itsmembers to integrate their newborn into the group, in order to finance the latter itswhole life long and to orient itself in everything according to the directives of the group, it would be called a “sect.” It is possible the state would dissolve the group and punish the “sect leaders” on grounds of coercion and extortion, even more so, if the group would 3not tolerate anyone leaving, instead hindering this under threat of severest punishment,thus giving rise to serious emotional disturbances and impairment of the freedom ofdevelopment in many of its members.Under the same facts and circumstances, can this be any different merely because itconcerns an organization that acts in the same way not only toward a few, but worldwide,calling itself the “Roman Catholic Church” and constantly referring to religiousfreedom, while setting “sect commissioners” onto those of different faith? It is notdifferent, but people have simply become accustomed to it. However, since July 1, 2002,this inurement is no longer admissible. On this day, the statute for the InternationalCriminal Court came into effect, making crimes against humanity a punishable offense.If a coercive sect of the kind described above were widespread in present-day Africa andits members were forbidden the use of condoms under threat of severe punishment,transmission of the HIV-AIDS virus and the deaths caused by this would be attributedto the sect leaders, and charges would be brought against them. Can this be any differentsimply because the coercive sect calls itself a “church” and its head claims to beinfallible?If, in a worldwide coercive sect, hundreds of thousands of children were sexually abusedand the crimes covered up and prosecution called off at the behest of the sect leader, thiscriminal organization and its leader would be put on trial. Can this be any differentmerely because this organization calls itself a “church” and the command to be silentabout the crimes does not come from a mafia boss, but is pronounced by the pope? It isno different, but it is simply centuries of becoming inured to a pedophile priesthood andthe power of its high priests. Since the statutory offense of crimes against humanityexists, this “looking the other way” is no longer admissible.In the following, charges are brought against three crimes committed against humanity,for which Dr. Joseph Ratzinger, as former cardinal and present-day pope, is criminallyliable:1. the preservation and leadership of a worldwide totalitarian regime of coercion, whichsubjugates its members with terrifying and health-endangering threats,42. the adherence to a fatal forbiddance of the use of condoms, even when the danger ofHIV-AIDS infection exists, and

3. the establishment and maintenance of a worldwide system of cover-up of the sexualcrimes committed by Catholic priests and their preferential treatment, which aids andabets ever new crimes.

I. The Terrifying Church Regime

There is strong suspicion that Dr. Joseph Ratzinger, as cardinal and as pope,caused severe impairment to the mental and physical health of an unknownnumber of people in the meaning of Art. 7(1)(k) ICCSt., in any case, provokingcorresponding health hazards.

1. Compulsory membership

The Roman Catholic Church acquires its members through a compulsory act,namely, through the baptism of infants that do not yet have a will of their own,as determined in Can. 96 of the Code of Canon Law (C.I.C. [Codex IurisCanonici]):

“By baptism one is incorporated into the Church of Christ ...”

As a rule, baptism takes place during infancy. Catholic parents must believe thattheir newborn child is burdened with the taint of original sin, from which it canbe freed solely through baptism. In the current Catechism of the Roman CatholicChurch, it literally says the following about this:

“Born with a fallen human nature and tainted by original sin, children alsohave need of the new birth in Baptism to be freed from the power ofdarkness and brought into the realm of the freedom of the children of God,to which all men are called. … The Church and the parents would deny achild the priceless grace of becoming a child of God were they not to conferBaptism shortly after birth.” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, No. 1250)5

And in the Code of Canon Law, it says in Can. 867, para. 1:

“Parents are obliged to take care that infants are baptized in the first fewweeks; as soon as possible after the birth or even before it, they are to go tothe pastor to request the sacrament for their child and to be preparedproperly for it.”

In case the child is in danger of dying, the baptism should even take placeagainst the will of the parents. Can. 868, para. 2 C.I.C. determines the followingregarding this:

“An infant of Catholic parents or even of non-Catholic parents is baptizedlicitly in danger of death even against the will of the parents.”Most Catholic parents defer to this statement and have their children baptized asearly as possible, usually a few weeks after birth. According to prevailingopinion, their right to care for and raise their children is sufficient for this, eventhough, according to Catholic doctrine, baptism binds the baptized child in away that amounts to living in servitude. The Catholic Catechism states thefollowing about this:

“Having become a member of the Church, the person baptized belongs nolonger to himself, but to him who died and rose for us. From now on, he iscalled to be subject to others, to serve them in the communion of the Church,and to ‘obey and submit’ to the Church's leaders, holding them in respectand affection.” (Catechism, No. 1269)

The incorporation of the baptized child in the Catholic Church is irrevocable (cf.von Campenhausen, Hdb. d. Staatskirchenrechts der Bundesrepublik Deutschland,2. Ed., Berlin 1994, p. 759 f.), due to which the church also refuses to deletepeople who have left the church from the baptismal records.

According to the binding doctrine of the church, leaving the church leads to theeternal punishment of hell. This is what it says, for instance, in the book by JosefNeuner and J. Dupuis, “The Christian Faith in the Doctrinal Documents of theCatholic Church,” 2001. Margin Note No. 1005, p. 421:6“The Holy Roman Church firmly believes, professes and preaches that ‘noone remaining outside the Catholic Church, not only pagans’ but also Jews,heretics or schismatics, can become partakers of eternal life; but they will goto the ‘eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels,’ unless before theend of their life they are joined to it (the Church).”According to Can. 1364, in conjunction with Can. 751 of the Corpus iurisCanonici (C.I.C.), to leave the church leads to excommunication, which, in turn,according to No. 1463 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, represents a“particularly grave sin” that, according to No. 1861 of the Catechism, results inthe “eternal death of hell.”

2. Psycho-terror

Among other things, the following applies to members of the church (Neuner, J.and Roos, H. “The Teaching of the Catholic Church as Contained in HerDocuments,” Mercier Press Ltd., 1967, Margin Note No. 91, p. 63):

“If any one shall not receive as sacred and canonical the Books of HolyScripture, entire with all their parts, as the Holy Synod of Trent hasenumerated them, or shall deny that they have been divinely inspired –anathema sit.”

“Anathema sit” literally translated from the Greek-Latin formulation means:“may he be damned.”

According to this, anyone who does not acknowledge the threats of punishmentin the Old Testament as the word of God is also “damned.” For example:

“If a man commits adultery with the wife of his neighbor, both theadulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death …” (Lev. 20:10)

“If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committedan abomination; they shall surely be put to death …” (Lev. 20:13)

“The man who acts presumptuously by not obeying the priest who standsto minister there before the LORD your God, or the judge, that man shalldie …!” (Dt. 17:12)7

“If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son who will not obey the voice ofhis father or the voice of his mother, and, though they discipline him, willnot listen to them, then his father and his mother shall take hold of himand bring him out to the elders of his city at the gate of the place where helives, and they shall say to the elders of his city, ‘This our son is stubbornand rebellious; he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton and a drunkard.’Then all the men of the city shall stone him to death with stones. ...” (Dt.21:18-21)

At first glance, such things may seem like something from the Stone Age thathas been obsolete for thousands of years. The Roman Catholic Church, however,views it differently. In 1965, its highest body, in the form of the Second VaticanCouncil, declared the following in its “Dogmatic Constitution on DivineRevelation [Dei Verbum]”:

“… For holy mother Church, relying on the belief of the Apostles, holdsthat the books of both the Old and New Testaments in their entirety, withall their parts, are sacred and canonical because written under theinspiration of the Holy Spirit, they have God as their author and have beenhanded on as such to the Church herself. … Therefore, since everythingasserted by the inspired authors or sacred writers must be held to beasserted by the Holy Spirit, it follows that the books of Scripture must beacknowledged as teaching solidly, faithfully and without error that truth…”

(Die Verbum, Chap. III,11. http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19651118_dei-verbum_en.html)Accordingly, in the Catechism of the Catholic Church held to be valid untiltoday, it says:

“The Old Testament is an indispensable part of Sacred Scripture. Its booksare divinely inspired … Christians venerate the Old Testament as trueWord of God …” (No. 121 & 123)

If this is so, it is possible that only the limits imposed by secular law are keepingthe church from carrying out the threats of death that the Old Testament holdsready for adulterers, homosexuals, heretics and disobedient children.8

Among other things, the God of the Old Testament, the words of which thechurch still considers valid today as “the true Word of God,” calls upon one to:“Take care, lest you make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land towhich you go, lest it become a snare in your midst. You shall tear downtheir altars and break their pillars and cut down their Asherim [sacredpoles].” (Ex. 4:12-13)

Paul, who is venerated by the church as the “apostle to the nations,” even goes astep further, by writing the following about heretics or followers of other cults:“They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness,malice … They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. …they know God’s decree that those who practice such things deserve todie…” (Rom. 1:29, 32)

How seriously the church takes such calls, when secular law does not hold it incheck, was demonstrated, for instance, by its missionary work in Latin America.And should a nation rebel against the cruel God of the Old Testament, withwhom the church identifies, it is threatened anew with terrible things:He “shall eat up the nations, his adversaries, and shall break their bones inpieces and pierce them through with his arrows.” (Ex. 24:8)Even if a contemporary with common sense is not at all inclined to connect thiswith God, according to church opinion, this, too, is the “true word of God,” andanyone who claims differently is considered one of the false teachers, againstwhom the church hurls the following words in the second Letter of Peter:“But these, like irrational animals, creatures of instinct, born to be caughtand destroyed … They are blots and blemishes …” (2 Pet. 2:12-13)There is no freedom of faith or of conscience. Instead, the following holds true:“Furthermore we declare, state and define that it is absolutely necessary forthe salvation of all men that they submit to the Roman pontiff.” (Neuner &Roos, op.cit., Margin Note 342)

9

The decisions of the pope are “irreformable of themselves, and not from the consent of the Church. But if any one – which God avert – presume to contradict this Our definition – anathema sit.” (=damned) (Neuner-Roos, op.cit., Margin Note 388)“To be damned” means to be damned to the eternal torments of hell. KarlJaspers, one of the great German philosophers of the past century, writes thefollowing about these sanctions: “There are the eternal torments of hell: theChurch relentlessly spurned the teachings of Origin, who regarded the punishmentsof hell as limited in time by the restoration of all things (apokatastasispanton) … through this, the souls remained in its hand. Nietzsche pointed out …that the Church seized the widespread concept of eternal punishment as the ‘most fertile egg of its power’ … Because the priest penetrates into the inmost of the soul – on the strength of his office, not as mere mortal – he can put unheard of pressure on the believer. Parents may be held liable and threatened with purgatory, for failing to keep their grown children in the Church.” (Jaspers, “Philosophical Faith and Revelation,” New York, 1967, p. 43.) In the official documents of the Roman Catholic Church, about “The Last Things,” it says among other things:

“… in accordance with God’s universal ordinance the souls of those who diein actual mortal sin descend immediately after death to hell where they aretormented by eternal punishment.” (Neuner & Roos, Margin Note 822)

“But whoever dies in mortal sin without penance will without any doubt suffer for ever in the fires of eternal hell.” (Neuner & Roos, Margin Note 815)

Thereby, it is brought again and again to the believer’s attention that this involvesnot only mental-emotional torments, but also terrible physical tortures, with which Jesus Christ allegedly will punish the evil ones at the Last Judgment: “Jesus Christ … will come at the end of time to judge the living and the dead, to render to each according to his works, to the rejected and to the elect, who will all arise with their own bodies which they now have so that they may receive, according as their works were good or bad, either perpetual punishment with the devil or eternal glory with Christ.” (Neuner & Roos, Margin Note 813)

10

At the same time, the church threatens the faithful, by way of the alleged statements of Jesus found in the Gospel text authorized by the church: “When the Son of man comes in his glory … he will place the sheep at his right hand, but the goats to his left … Then he will say to those at his left hand, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels’ … And they will go away into eternal punishment …” (Matthew 25:31,32,41,46)

The social psychologist Franz Buggle writes about the eternal torments of hell, with which the church makes threats in its own documents with the help of the alleged words of Jesus; among other things: “… a threat of punishment, whichdisastrous, psychologically devastating effect on countless people in the historyof Christendom cannot be at all overstated. Try to free yourself from all inurementcaused by religious education and to realize what psychological significancea threat of eternally lasting torments must have. All otherwise knowntortures and punishments pale in the face of this, because they are at leastlimited by time. … there is hardly any other psychological phenomenon like thethreat of eternally lasting torments, which very much deserves the name psychoterror!”(Buggle, Denn sie wissen nicht, was sie glauben, [For They Know NotWhat They Believe] 1992, p. 98)In many people, not lastly in children and youth, the results of this terror arefear of sinning, chronic bad conscience, hypochondria, and a myriad of manifestationsof “ecclesiogenic neuroses,” which can imply bondage to the church,and which is still effective even in those who, over the course of their life, triedto free themselves from the details of the church message of threat. Karl Jasperswrites concerning this: “To the hour of death, the priest may bring comfort ortorment; to this day, Catholics who have ceased to believe are seen to turn backthen, as if held by an inner chain …” (Jaspers, op.cit., p. 43) It is the mentalagony that shackles church members from a very early age, expressed in one ofthe most important writings of the papal church, in which it says: “It is a fearfulthing to fall into the hands of the living God.” (Heb.10:31)113. A crime against humanityThe coercion of faith and of conscience that goes out from the Roman CatholicChurch, practiced against members recruited and held under compulsion, andenforced with threats of the severest evil imaginable in the eternal torments ofhell, is a grave impairment of the personal freedom of development and of aperson’s emotional and mental integrity. That church members thereby do notcollectively collapse mentally and emotionally can only be due to the fact thatmany do not take a large part of the church’s message of threat seriously.However, this inner emigration does not change anything about the inhumannessof the system and its goal of the total emotional and mental subjugation ofchurch members. And it literally presumes the following: “She must thereforewith painstaking care remove and eradicate anything that is contrary to faith …”(Neuner & Roos, Margin Note 352)How seriously this is meant can be seen by the trail of blood left by theCrusades, the Inquisition and the witch burnings. That the church presentlycannot put its spirit of violence into practice in physical acts of violence does notchange a thing about the fact that its system of mental subjugation is contrary tohuman rights. The constantly repeated threat, issued in different variations: “Ifyou do not believe what I tell you, you will suffer the eternal torments of hell,”occurs towards people whom the church expects to take this threat seriously.And many do so and therefore become ill, either now and then, or evenchronically: With their first sexual contact, young people suffer under theanxiety of having sinned; married couples allow themselves to be forbidden theuse of birth control measures; non-Catholics who marry Catholics must, at thetime of marriage, pledge to raise the children as Catholics; mentally ill peoplehave “evil spirits driven out” by church exorcists, and in the process, parentseven risk the death of their child. Children abused by priests and their parentsfeel obliged to remain silent about the crimes; African Catholics become infectedwith HIV, because according to Catholic sexual “morals,” the use of condoms isnot allowed.12Ultimately, the damages caused by church coercion do not need to be determined,because, with the crimes committed against humanity via the threats thatare under consideration here, a serious threat to the victim’s health is alreadysufficient (cf. Werle, Völkerstrafrecht, 2.Ed., 2007, Margin Note 343). In any case,it concerns the mental use of force, which is similar to other crimes againsthumanity, such as “coercion into prostitution” [Art. 7(1)(g) ICCSt.] or deportation(d) or – ”remove and eradicate anything” – apartheid (j). Compared to thethreats of the eternal torments of hell, the temporal suffering connected withthese is nigh on harmless. The church system of coercion thus falls under theelements of an offense of “other inhuman acts of a similar kind” in the meaningof Art. 7(1)(k) ICCSt.The fact that the church system of coercion has been in existence for about 1500years and is an established religion in the countries of the western hemispheredoes not change this, either. This establishment did not take place through thefree recognition of the church system, but through compulsory membership,mental oppression and bloody violence. The outcome of this historical process,which led to the “worldwide church,” was accepted with the help of traditionand inurement, nolens volens (like it or not), even though, throughout thecenturies, resistance of a philosophical and religious kind took place. Over andover again, these were successfully quelled, in part, in an extremely bloody wayand with state help.This state help also consisted of the fact that no legal limits were set regardingthe preservation of this church system of coercion. This has changed since theRome Statute of the International Criminal Court of July 1, 2002 came into effect.With this, the statutory offense of crimes against humanity was created as aninternational law. It protects not only against murder and manslaughter, but alsohas in mind human rights that go beyond this, such as protection against racialdiscrimination, expulsion and deportation and “other inhuman acts of a similarkind.” In this respect, it is a cultural turn for mankind initiated through theinternational criminal law. Health-endangering psycho-terror consisting ofcoercion of faith and of conscience by way of inhuman threats is no longertolerated, but is, instead, punishable, insofar as it is inflicted upon a “civilian13population” through an “extensive or systematic” act (Art. 7(1) p. 1 ICCSt.). Thecoercive system of the church is equal to such an attack, for the threats made bythe church take place “pursuant to or in furtherance of a State or organizationpolicy,” namely that of the church, “to commit such an attack,” [Art. 7 (2)(a)ICCSt.] in order to enforce its doctrine worldwide against the “civilian population.”4. The criminal responsibility of Dr. RatzingerThe accused may very well not have initiated the church system of coercion;however, as pope, he is responsible for its preservation and enforcement and, asPrefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith of his church, he wasjointly responsible, being in a decisive position as the representative of theformer pope. He was head of the church’s Inquisition authority and feltaccordingly. In a radio interview in March 2005, he said: “Grand Inquisitor is ahistoric definition. Somewhere, we stand in a line of continuity.” And he addedthat one “must indeed say that the Inquisition was progress, because nothingcould be condemned anymore without ‘inquisitio’ [a hearing].”Today, the accused bears the final responsibility for all his church’s doctrinesand threats. Therefore, he is also responsible for the fact that the church systemof coercion, installed before his election as pope, continues to exist. He couldrevoke the threats of eternal torments of hell. As long as he does not do this, hefulfills the above-indicated statutory offense of Art. 7(1)(k) ICCSt. by way ofomission (cf. also Werle, op.cit., Margin Note 472 f.).II. The Murderous Forbiddance of CondomsThere is strong suspicion that, as pope, Dr. Joseph Ratzinger has caused anundetermined number of people severe impairment of their physical health oreven their death, in the meaning of Art. 7(1)(a) and (k) ICCSt.141. The conflictAccording to UN figures, more than 22 million people in Africa are presentlyinfected with HIV-AIDS; approximately 30 million have already died of theepidemic. In South Africa, every fifth person is affected by it. There are about500,000 new infections annually. Many millions of Catholics also live in the areasaffected.The transmission of the HIV virus occurs through the exchange of bodily fluids.For this reason, one of the most important measures for the containment of theepidemic consists in urging people in the endangered areas to use condomsduring sexual intercourse.According to the doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church, proclaimed via theencyclical Humanae Vitae by Pope Paul VI in 1968, contraceptives, however, arestrictly forbidden. And nothing changed regarding this when the number ofpersons infected with HIV skyrocketed during the 1980s and 1990s and the HIVvirus led to millions of deaths, which continues until today. When Pope JohnPaul II visited Uganda in February 1993, he omitted the burning question concerninga change in the life-endangering forbiddance of condoms. He preferredto accept the spread of the epidemic rather than to change the “moral” doctrineof the Vatican. In a “Vademecum for Confessors,” which the same pope commissionedin 1997, Cardinal Alfonso Lopéz Trujillo, president of the “PontificalCouncil for the Family,” emphasized the absolute validity of the old determination:“The Church has always taught the intrinsic evil of contraception, thatis, of every marital act intentionally rendered unfruitful. This teaching is to beheld as definitive and irreformable.”(http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/family/documents/rc_pc_family_doc_12021997_vademecum_en.html)Members of the Catholic Church who live in the areas of Africa threatened byHIV-AIDS, that is, primarily south of the Sahara, are faced with a terriblealternative: If they protect themselves with condoms during sexual intercourse,they become grave sinners; if they do not protect themselves out of fear of the15punishment of sin threatened by the church, they become candidates for death.In 1989, a Catholic moral theologian – Carlo Caffarra, who today is the Archbishopof Bologna – called for ending all sexual activities, even within marriage,if one of the partners is HIV positive. Forbidding the use of condoms not onlyled to fatal infections among Catholics, but at the same time also abetted in thecontraction of this disease among non-Catholics.For years, resistance to this unworldly and life-endangering “moral” has beenexpressed, also from within the ranks of the church. According to Spiegel Onlineon April 4, 2010, Kevin Dowling, the Catholic Bishop in Rustenburg, SouthAfrica, already charged his church on World AIDS Day 2003, with being “blindtoward the reality of life of millions of poor people.” The people in Africa “live,suffer and die because of this disease.” In his bishopric, the Bishop hasexperienced firsthand, how people in the workcamps die of AIDS by the dozens.“I believe that people living with HIV must be invited and challenged to use acondom in order to prevent the transmission of potential death to anotherperson, or to protect themselves from infection, especially in abusive and destructiverelationships,” declared the Bishop.(http://www.mh2.dds.nl/2003/kitchap5/Michael4%20oct.htm)2. Obedience with fatal consequencesBut the present ruling pope also closes his ears to the moral dilemma of hispriests and believers. Even worse: During his first trip to Africa in March 2009,when many African Catholics hoped for a redeeming word, he intensified thedilemma during a conversation with journalists aboard the airplane that tookhim to Africa. He stated: “The scourge cannot be resolved by distributing condoms;quite the contrary, we risk worsening the problem.” He said that thesolution lies in a “spiritual and human renewal” and in “true friendship, aboveall, for those who are suffering.”(http://www.catholic.org/international/international_story.php?id=32739 [cf. nachrichten.t-online.de from March 18, 2009])16All the aid organizations with no ties to churches, such as the United NationsInternational Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF), reacted with incomprehensionto so much ignorance. For the pope’s statement occurred two years afterthe publication of the sensational book “Gott, Aids, Afrika” (God, AIDS, Africa)by Grill und Hippler, in which the years-long leader of the German Congregationin Cape Town (Hippler) reported about the terrible moral dilemmaand the mortal dangers associated with it for the Catholic population of SouthAfrica. Among other things, he wrote: “How can we justify the death of peopleeven if they do not live up to our church’s strict moral code? Shouldn’t theteenager who sleeps with his girlfriend protect himself – and her? It’s literally aquestion of life and death. In that light, long discussions about whether theauthorization of condoms might lead to an increase in promiscuity areirrelevant. Indeed, the debate has already been settled. Studies conclusivelyshow that the use of prophylactics has no influence on the numbers of sexualpartners or frequency of sexual acts. Isn’t it high time that empirical studies –facts – should be integrated in the study of moral theology?But then, there is also concern that obedience to the church’s teaching authoritymight take a knock if moral theology is altered.”(www.stefanhippler.com/ebook/God-Aids-Africa.html)How right the author was about this became evident after the publication of hisbook. His contract in Cape Town was not renewed by his church. Book-signingtours in Germany or participation on talk shows was forbidden him by theGerman Bishops’ Conference.In 2009 another report about the fatal conflict between church doctrine andfighting AIDS effectively was published in the book “Das möge Gott verhüten”(“May God Prevent This”) by the former nun Majella Lenzen. Among otherthings, the nun reported: “For 33 years, I have helped people, particularly sickpeople, so that they could lead a life in dignity. The people have suffered fromcholera, malaria, HIV, AIDS – their misfortune has made me courageous. Until itcame to the final scandal. I was stigmatized as the ‘condom nun,’ because I –against the orders of the church – espoused contraceptives as a possibility forpreemptively counteracting the immune deficiency AIDS. For me, this was a17necessity, because I have experienced the misery in the huts of the orphanedchildren in East Africa, I have seen the terribly emaciated bodies of the womenmarked by the disease, I have held their feeble hands and seen their anxious,sunken eyes.” In the end, she had to leave her order. In the epilogue of her book,she writes, among other things: “The fact that the church preaches sovehemently against condoms makes it jointly responsible that on Kilimanjaro,every third person is now HIV positive. The number of dead continuouslyclimbs.”3. A crime against humanityThis report from an eyewitness did not change anything in the Vatican, either.The same is true of an extensive expert report, which the pope has and whichraises the question of a revision of the church’s life-endangering doctrine onsexual relations.Instead, in an interview with the journalist Peter Seewald, which led to the book“Light of the World,” the pope casually commented on the problem of preventingAIDS with condoms. He said: “There may be justified individual cases,for instance, when a prostitute uses a condom, where this can be a first steptoward moralization.” But, of course, the church does not view this as a real andmoral solution. “… in this or that case, there can be nonetheless, in the intentionof reducing the risk of infection, a first step in a movement toward a differentway, a more human way, of living sexuality.” (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11804798) This remark made the global public prick up its ears. Inreality, however, it did not initiate a change. In a report by the German PressAgency on Dec. 22, 2010, the following is stated about this:“Church Clarifies:Condoms Are Still Forbidden for CatholicsThe Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in Rome has stated theposition of the Catholic Church on condoms more precisely. It states that tointerpret the pope’s statements as permission to used contraceptives iswrong.18Despite Pope Benedict XVI statements being frequently greeted as looseningthe condom forbiddance, his Church keeps to its rejection of contraceptives.The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith stated in a so-called note thatin reality, Benedict’s words changed neither the moral doctrine nor thepastoral practice of the Catholic Church. ... In its extensive note, theCongregation, formerly led by Ratzinger, especially countered deliberatewrong interpretations of these pontifical statements: ‘The idea that anyonecould deduce from the words of Benedict XVI that it is somehow legitimate,in certain situations, to use condoms to avoid an unwanted pregnancy iscompletely arbitrary and is in no way justified either by his words or in histhought.’” (http://www.dici.org/en/news/a-note-from-the-congregationfor-the-doctrine-of-the-faith-on-the-pope%E2%80%99s-remarks-about-condoms)This kind of thinking is an accessory to death.4. The criminal responsibility of Dr. RatzingerIt is true that the accused did not initiate the strict forbiddance of contraceptives;however, as pope, he is responsible for the fact that it continues to exist, for hecould revoke it.Due to the fact that he does not do this, he is – by omission – responsible for thefact that in regions threatened with AIDS Catholics abstain from the protectionby condoms out of fear of punishment for their sins. The church’s coercivesystem and the threat of the eternal torments of hell associated with it for committinggrave sins has, in this case, a fatal effect in hundreds of thousands, that isto say, millions, of cases. The pope’s moral reservation about revoking the forbiddanceof condoms is no justification for accepting the risk of infection or thedeath of countless people and the misery of countless orphaned children that gowith this forbiddance. In any case, saving human lives is the greater good, it ismandatory according to international law and prevails over the church doctrinethat is contrary to human rights.19III. Joseph Ratzinger’s Patronage of the Sexual Crimes of the ClergyFinally, there is the strong suspicion that Dr. Joseph Ratzinger, as Prefect of theCongregation for the Doctrine of the Faith of his church and as pope, has up tothe present day systematically covered up the sexual abuse of children andyouth and protected the perpetrators, thereby aiding and abetting further sexualviolence toward young people in the meaning of Art. 7(1)(g) ICCSt.1. The worldwide sexual crimes of Catholic priestsMeanwhile, it is known that during the last decades, thousands of Catholicpriests have sexually abused and raped tens of thousands of children and youth.The following account is limited to the sexual crimes committed in the countriesmost affected and some examples of the cover-up by the church. It is mainlybased on the compilation by Geoffrey Robertson QC, THE CASE OF THE POPE,2010 (enclosed) and the reports of German and English media. In addition,reference is made to the website gottes-suche.de and the encompassing compilation“Sexual Violence in the Catholic Church During the Years 1993 to 2011”found there.1.1 USAThe complete magnitude of the crime first became known through a series ofreports by the Boston Globe in 2002. The newspaper reported that since the mid-1990s, 130 victims of a Bostonian priest reported their terrible childhood experiences.As school children, they had been abused and raped over a period ofthree decades. The cardinal in charge, Bernard Law, was well aware of the factthat it wasn’t one specific priest, but a number of his priests who were sexuallymolesting young boys, but his only reaction to the accusations of their victimswas to transfer the priests to different parishes where their past was unknown.The cardinal himself was transferred to the Vatican where he received honorabletasks while his diocese had to pay over $100 million in damages to the victims ofthe priests he was covering up for. (cf., Robertson, op.cit. p. 16)20In all of the United States, countless victims of ecclesiastic child molesters havenow spoken up. The Archdiocese of Los Angeles settled with the victims there tothe tune of $660 million in damages. It also became known that the bishop ofPortland, William Levada, had learned of the danger of pedophile priests in hisdiocese as early as 1985, but undertook nothing against it. The tolerance of thesewrongs and their resulting damage almost plunged his diocese into bankruptcyfrom which it could emerge only by agreeing to pay $75 million in damages tothe victims. Today, Levada succeeds the pope as Prefect Cardinal of the Congregationfor the Doctrine of the Faith. Other dioceses resorted to bankruptcy inorder to escape child abuse lawsuits filed by victims of sexual crimes by theclergy. The Vatican, from which came all instructions on how to deal with theproblem of pedophiles in the worldwide church, did not step in to save themfrom bankruptcy, although it receives millions in annual contributions (Peter’sPence) from the dioceses. In the end, the total bill for the crimes of the church’schild sex abusers could amount to 5 billion dollars, as Forbes magazine predicts.(cf. Robertson, op.cit. pp. 16-17)Sex abuse crimes committed by Catholic priests have become known in almostevery state of the United States. When it was no longer possible to transfer theperpetrators from parish to parish or from one diocese to the other, the bishopsin New York started sending them to other countries (instead of prison). “Recentinvestigations have indicated a traffick in pedophile priests to and from the USwith Ireland, Rome, Mexico and Africa.” The minimal number of sexual abusecases was given in a report conducted by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice inNew York and commissioned by the US Catholic Bishops Conference (in 2002):10,667 persons concerned “had made plausible allegations against 4,392 priests.”While in 2002, Cardinal Ratzinger wanted to reduce the number of perpetratorsto one percent of the priesthood, it now became clear that the number amountsto 4.3 percent. The worst case was that of Father Lawrence Murphy, who, over aperiod of twenty years, sexually abused 200 deaf-mute boys in Wisconsin – acase which will be dealt with again in connection with Cardinal Ratzinger’sactions. (cf. Robertson, op.cit., pp. 18-23)211.2 IrelandWhile Pope John Paul II sought to downplay the massive amount of childmolesting done by Catholic priests as a particularly American problem,(Robertson, op.cit., p. 20) in Ireland, a commission chaired by Sean Ryan, Justiceof the High Court, became active in 2001 to work out the rules of compensation.Their report was published in 2002, after having undertaken the first inquiriesinto sexual abuse in Catholic educational facilities. An extensive report waspublished in 2009, drafted by the “Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse,”again chaired by Justice Ryan. (The “Ryan Report”). He described the sexualabuse in Catholic facilities as “endemic.” Witnesses reported that their feelingsof shame, the superior physical force of the abusers, the practice of silence, theisolation and the fear of physical punishment, all these prevented them fromexposing this abuse. (Volume III, Chapters 7, 9 pp. 13-18, “Knowledge andDisclosure”). Furthermore, the following is written in the report:“It is impossible to determine the full extent of sexual abuse committed in boys’schools … Cases of sexual abuse were managed with a view to minimising therisk of public disclosure and consequent damage to the institution and thecongregation. This policy resulted in the protection of the perpetrator. When laypeople were discovered to have sexually abused, they were generally reported tothe Gardai (police). When a member of a congregation was found to be abusing,it was dealt with internally and was not reported to the Gardai (police). …The recidivist nature of sexual abuse was known to religious authorities. Thedocuments revealed that sexual abusers were often long-term offenders whorepeatedly abused children wherever they were working. Contrary to the congregations’claims that the recidivist nature of sexual offending was not understood,it is clear from the documented cases that they were aware of the propensityfor abusers to re-abuse. The risk, however, was seen by the congregationsin terms of the potential for scandal and bad publicity should the abuse bedisclosed. The danger to children was not taken into account. When confrontedwith evidence of sexual abuse, the response of the religious authorities was to22transfer the offender to another location where, in many instances, he was free toabuse again.” (Ryan Report. Conclusions: 19-22).In November 2009, under the chairmanship of Judge Yvonne Murphy, a reportwas drafted, which dealt with the situation in the Diocese of Dublin. The scopeof the report encompassed the years 1975 to 2004. Again, a large number ofwitnesses were heard and corresponding documents evaluated. 14,500 victimswere ascertained. Based on the abundance of evidence, the commission came tothe following conclusion, in summary:“The Commission has no doubt that clerical sexual child abuse was coveredup by the Archdiocese of Dublin and other Church authorities over much ofthe period covered by the Commission’s remit. The structures and rules ofthe Catholic Church facilitated that cover-up. The State authorities facilitatedthe cover up by not fulfilling their responsibilities to ensure that the law wasapplied equally to all and allowing the Church institutions to be beyond thereach of the normal law enforcement processes. The welfare of children,which should have been the first priority, was not even a factor to beconsidered in the early stages. Instead the focus was on the avoidance ofscandal and the preservation of the good name, status and assets of the institutionand of what the institution regarded as its most important members– the priests. In the mid-1990s, a light began to be shone on the scandal andthe cover up. Gradually, the story has unfolded. It is the responsibility of theState to ensure that no similar institutional immunity is ever allowed tooccur again. This can be ensured only if all institutions are open to scrutinyand not accorded an exempted status by any organs of the State.”(http://www.inis.gov.ie/en/JELR/Part%201.pdf/Files/Part%201.pdf).1.3 GermanyAnd in Germany, the wall of silence concerning the abuse of children in churchfacilities on a massive scale was also impenetrable for a long time. It was brokenthrough in 2010 by the leader of the Canisius College of the Jesuit Order.Investigations were made after several cases of abuse during the 1970s and 1980s23became known to him. They revealed that for years on end, 50 priests sexuallyabused over 200 children and youth at the Canisius College. Further child abusecrimes in many other bishoprics soon became known. Until then, everything hadbeen kept secret. (cf. Der Spiegel 6/2010) Now, much came to light. In Bavariaalone, at least 280 perpetrators were determined, who, since 1945, had becomesexually abusive towards children and youth in church facilities. (cf. SüddeutscheZeitung, Oct. 22, 2010). These investigations brought to light that also in theArchbishopric of Munich and Freising sexual child abuse cases had beensystematically covered up. In at least one case, the then acting cardinal inMunich, Joseph Ratzinger, was responsible: When in 1979 a pedophile priest wastransferred from Munich to Essen, he was once more appointed to pastoral carethere without being reported to the police. Later, he became a recidivist and wasfinally sentenced by a German court (cf. Robertson, op.cit., p. 29; süddeutsche.defrom Mar. 26, 2010; Der Spiegel 48/2010). An investigative report commissionedby the bishopric in 2010 determined that relevant files had, in part, beendestroyed or were filled with gaps. When priests were transferred to otherbishoprics, the grounds were not mentioned. If it was about sexual offenses,these were played down. In the Süddeutsche Zeitung the result of the report wasreflected in the headline of the article: “Abuse Systematically Covered Up ByChurch.” The newspaper summarized: “No matter whether the cardinals wereDöpfner, Ratzinger or Wetter – the victims of sexual violence did not find asympathetic ear, the perpetrators, on the other hand, did, all the way to the brinkof the obstruction of justice.” (Süddeutsche Zeitung from Dec. 4-5, 2010)1.4 CanadaIn Canada, the first large child molester scandal occurred in 1990: Nine ChristianBrothers, a lay organization of the Catholic Church, were gaoled for repeatedsexual assaults on boys in an orphanage. In 2001 it was revealed that a Catholicschool in Montreal had become a den for sexual abuse, covered up repeatedly bycompensation payments for the crimes of priests who were never reported topolice. In 2003 police discovered that a bishop had hidden handwritten confessionsfrom one priest whom he had transferred to another parish withoutcalling attention to the priest’s criminal record. The man was eventually con-24victed of abusing 47 girls. Canada’s biggest scandal is the sexual, physical andemotional violence that took place in residential schools for aboriginal children,also run by the Catholic Church. A national compensation agreement requiredthe church to pay $80 million dollars and the government had to pay $2.2 billion.The Pope has apologized, but here, too, there have been concerns that the churchdid not fully cooperate with the government Commission that had investigatedthe crimes. (cf. Robertson, op.cit., p. 33 f.)1.5 AustraliaPractically no country where the Catholic Church is active was spared. InAustralia 90 priests have been convicted for sexual abuse, but many more havebeen protected from the criminal justice process, because the church has keptallegations secret and made confidential settlements. In 2010 it became knownthat a commissioner of the church ordered payments in respect of the sexualmolestation of children by 300 priests, only one of whom had been defrocked. Inone case, a child molester was transferred to another parish, where he transgressedagain. (cf. Robertson, op.cit, pp. 32-33)1.6 AfricaThe church proceeded to transfer its child abuse criminals more and more, notonly from parish to parish, but to Africa in droves. In May 2010, the first reportsabout the intense trafficking of child-molesting priests from Germany, Italy,Ireland and the USA to Nigeria, South Africa, Mozambique and the Congobecame known. The head of the South African Bishops Conference complainedthat the continent had been sent priests who were “wolves wearing sheepskin.”(cf. Robertson, op.cit., p. 30 with endnote indicating Legal Brief Africa, Issue No.379, May 3, 2010)1.7 Prominent perpetratorsMeanwhile it is becoming known more and more that sexual perversion is by nomeans limited to the simple priesthood, but reaches into the highest ranks of theCatholic Church. At the same time, the sex scandals involving bishops and arch-25bishops frequently opened the door to deeper insight into the immorality of theCatholic clergy. For example, in April 2010 the Bishop of Bruges (Belgium)resigned from his office, because the fact that he had sexually abused hisnephew for years came to light. He waited to confess his crime until the 10 yearlimitation-period had elapsed and he could therefore no longer be punished. Hiscase led to the appointment of an investigative board of inquiry of the BelgianBishops Conference, whose investigations revealed that over the course of pastdecades at least 488 cases of abuse had occurred. A state investigation of thecases did not take place. (cf. Süddeutsche Zeitung from Sept. 14, 2010 and NYTimes July 12, 2010, “Abuse Took Years to Ignite Belgian Clergy Inquiry”).In Norway, Archbishop Mueller admitted to abusing a 12-year-old altar boy inthe early 1990s. The worst case of a church spiritual leader is the case of theformer Cardinal Hans-Hermann Groer from Austria, who had molested anestimated 2,000 boys in his twenty-year passage to a bishopric. He was neverpunished for this; instead, Pope John Paul II even permitted him to withdrawundisturbed to a monastery. Some of his victims received compensation andwere bound to silence. These events took place in the 1980s and 1990s whenJoseph Ratzinger was Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.In 2000, he and John Paul II were also informed that the Polish Archbishop JuliusPaetz was abusing trainee priests. They ignored this information at the time anddid not ask Paetz to resign until the truthful allegations became public, severalyears later. (cf. Robertson, op.cit., pp. 29-30).In Latin America people became aware of the crimes of ecclesiastic child abuse,primarily committed by a friend of Pope John Paul II, Padre Marcial MacielDegollado. The pope received him in 2004, to celebrate the 60th anniversary ofhis ordination as priest and to thank him for “a ministry full of the gifts of theHoly Spirit.” (http://www.karoljackowski.com/NationalCatholicReporter-Dec10-04.html) In Mexico Maciel had founded the Order Legionaires of Christ, anorganization similar to the notorious Opus Dei. In its issue of Oct. 16/17, 2010,the Frankfurter Rundschau reported the following about this man:26“If there were an internal-church ranking list of the gravest sinners, Macielwould take top place. For decades, the founder of the order, who died in2008, was not only inclined to worldly vices like intoxicants. He was also notparticularly serious about celibacy and fathered three children with twowomen, as the Order itself has now admitted. But what weighs heaviest, isthe fact that Maciel is said to have abused 20 to 100 children, including hisown children. According to statements from the victims, his excuse for thiswas a ‘stomach ailment’ that could be relieved only by means of ‘massage.’After the completed ‘treatment,’ he heard the victims’ confession and sworethem to secrecy, as required by the regulations of the order. The accusationsagainst Maciel were known in the Vatican for decades. Already at the end ofthe 1970s, a victim had described his torments and sent the letter, annotatedwith the assertions of fellow sufferers, to Rome. Nothing happened. It wasonly in 1997 that eight former Mexican seminarians dared to go public.Shortly thereafter, they filed a complaint with the Congregation for theDoctrine of the Faith; the investigation, however, was soon discontinued. …Only when John Paul II was on his deathbed, did Ratzinger initiate a newinvestigation; what the chief prosecutor of the Congregation for the Doctrineof the Faith, Charles Sciculuna, learned from Maciel’s victims was soshocking that in 2006 Rome ordered the founder of the order to lead ‘aretiring life of prayer and penance.’ No legal action was taken against him.Maciel died at the age of 87 undisturbed in the USA.”In Argentina, as well, a prominent church leader, the Archbishop of the archdioceseof Santa Fe de la Vera Cruz, was the object of serious accusations. 47young seminarians accused him of sexually abusing them. In February 1995, thebishop traveled to Rome and managed to have Pope John Paul II suspend theinvestigation and ratify his post. Only when the Argentinean journalist OlgaWornat made the case public in 2002 in the book “Our Holy Mother” (“NuestraSanta Madre”) and a former seminarian filed charges against the bishop, did heresign his post. At the end of 2009, he was sentenced to 8 years imprisonment,which he is serving under house arrest.(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_abuse_scandal_in_Santa_Fe_de_la_Vera_Cruz_archdiocese)27In Nigeria, the Archbishop of Benin City, Richard Anthony Burke was accusedof maintaining a sexual relationship with a minor girl and of having lived inconcubinage. On May 31, 2010, Pope Benedict XVI accepted his resignation.(Wikipedia, Sexueller Missbrauch in der römisch-katholischen Kirche, 2.8.1.)There is nothing known about a legal case against the bishop.2. The cover-up strategy2.1 The pontifical secretBefore his election to the papacy in 2005, Dr. Joseph Ratzinger had been thePrefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith since 1981. It consists ofthree departments. One of them is the “Department of Discipline,” which dealswith offenses against morals. From 1962 on, the treatment of such offenses isbased on a confidential pontifical decree entitled “Crimen solicitationis.” In casesof sexual offenses committed by priests, it obligated every perpetrator, everyvictim and every witness to keep absolute secrecy under the threat of excommunication.At first, even the decree itself remained a secret. Responsibility forthe administrative channel and litigation procedure was exclusively in the handsof the Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office. On April 30, 2001, by way of aMotu Proprio (Apostolic Letter) entitled “Sacramentorum sanctitatis tutela,”Pope John Paul II superceded the policies of “Crimen solicitationis” from 1962.The announcement of the new regulations took place by way of the letter “dedelictis gravioribus” (on serious delicts) of May 21, 2001, from the then head ofthe Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal Ratzinger, to all bishopsof the Catholic Church. Among other things, it says:“A delict against morals, namely: the delict committed by a cleric against theSixth Commandment of the Decalogue with a minor below the age of 18years … is reserved to the apostolic tribunal of the Congregation for theDoctrine of the Faith.” “As often as an ordinary [i.e.,bishop] or hierarch hasat least probable knowledge of a reserved delict, after he has carried outpreliminary investigation he is to indicate it to the Congregation for theDoctrine of the Faith, which unless it calls the case to itself because of special28circumstances of things, after transmitting appropriate norms, orders theordinary or hierarch to proceed ahead through his own tribunal.... When thetrial in the tribunal is finished in any fashion, all the acts of the case are to betransmitted ex officio as soon as possible to the Congregation for theDoctrine of the Faith. … Cases of this kind are subject to the pontificalsecret.” (Robertson, op.cit., pp. 199, 200).2.2 The practice of cover-upEven just considering this canonical situation, one has to assume that the head ofthe Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith was always informed about all thesexual crimes that were committed by Catholic priests worldwide. Furthermore,one has to assume that he was also basically informed on how the local bishopshandled the investigations or the settlement of the cases known to the localbishops and to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in Rome. He knewthat, as a rule, the church did not inform the police and that punishment of theperpetrators thus remained within the church, whereby the maximum punishment,even for the worst sexual crimes, is merely excommunication and dismissalfrom office. Furthermore, he knew that such dismissals not only occurredvery rarely, but that in many cases the priests were re-assigned and often abusedchildren again. Of course, he also knew when state investigative commissionswere appointed (for example, in Dublin and Massachusetts), to investigate thesexual crimes of his priests, and how these commissions were hindered in theirinvestigations by the church. In November 2009, the Murphy Commission notonly determined that for decades the Catholic bishops of Ireland had kept secretthe rape and mistreatment of minors, involving a total of 14,500 victims, but thatthe cover-up also continued toward the commission itself, as was also doneduring the investigation by the Attorney General of Massachusetts. The latterspoke of a “culture of secrecy” and the John Jay study (cf. Above 1.1) reached theshocking finding that 76 per cent of child sex abuse allegations made againstpriests had never been reported to law enforcement authorities. (Robertson,op.cit. p. 22) The Murphy Commission wrote in its report that, in Massachusettsas in Dublin, secrecy “protected the institution at the expense of children.”(Murphy Report, Chapter 1, No. 28; http://www.inis.gov.ie/en/JELR/Part%201.pdf/Files/Part%201.pdf). Recently, it has been discovered via Wikileaks thatit was the Vatican itself that put obstacles in the way of the investigative com-29mission when it requested information from Rome. It was rejected, because therequest for information was not done via the Irish government but went directlyto the Vatican, which infringed upon its right to sovereignty (cf. Welt online,“Vatikan verweigerte Mitarbeit an Missbrauchsbericht,” from Dec. 12, 2010; TheGuardian, WikiLeaks cables: “Vatican refused to engage with child sex abuseinquiry,” from Dec. 11, 2010).Secrecy was the highest precept, not only legally, as written in the letter fromCardinal Ratzinger in 2001, but also in actual fact, cover-up was the order of theday. A particularly crass confirmation of this is very dramatically provided byan event from 2001, which just recently became known: On Sept. 8, 2001, theVatican congratulated the French Bishop Pierre Pican of Bayeux for a veryspecial deed. Even though according to French law, he would have been obligatedto report the sexual abuse committed by priests to the police, he did not doso, and at that, despite it being an especially grave case: the priest René Bisseyhad repeatedly raped a boy and molested ten others. He was finally sentenced to18 years in prison. Bishop Pican was sentenced to three months probation forinfringing against the obligation to disclosure. In the letter of commendationfrom Rome, it says: “You have acted well and I am pleased to have a colleague inthe episcopate who, in the eyes of history and of all other bishops in the world,preferred prison to denouncing his son and priest.” The letter was signed by thePrefect of the Congregation of the Clergy, Dario Castrillón Hoyos and, with theapproval of the pope and of the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine ofthe Faith, that is, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, a copy was sent to all BishopsConferences. (cf. Washington Post from April 23, 2010;http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/22/AR2010042205304.html; Robertson op.cit., p. 42).This fits right in with similar behavior patterns of the Vatican in other cases.When in view of the increasing child molesting scandals, the American BishopsConference suggested a strategy of zero-tolerance, wanting the perpetratorsreported to the police and demanding more frequent defrocking of guiltypriests, a resounding veto came from Rome: The then Secretary of the30Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith under Cardinal Ratzinger and todayCardinal Secretary of State Bertone stated in February 2002:“In my opinion, the demand that a bishop be obligated to contact the policein order to denounce a priest who has admitted the offense of pedophilia isunfounded. Naturally civil society has the obligation to defend its citizens.But it must also respect the ‘professional secrecy’ of priests ... If a priestcannot confide in his bishop for fear of being denounced, then it would meanthat there is no more liberty of conscience.” (John L. Allen, Jr., “All thePope’s Men,” 2004, p. 242) And the Prefect of the Congregation of theClergy, Castrillón Hoyos, “defended the church’s preference for ‘keepingthings within the family’.” (Allen, op.cit., p. 245; cf. also Robertson, op.cit., p.19 f., which cites even more cardinals with similar statements).That this was also done in previous years becomes apparent from a letter thatrecently became known, written by the Papal Nuntio in Dublin in 1997. As theNew York Times reported, the papal representative warned against the fact thatthe Irish church leadership had issued an order for complete collaboration withthe law enforcement agencies. Literally, the newspaper wrote: “The letter fromthe papal representative rejected a 1996 decision by Dublin church leaders torespond more candidly to the suppressed scandal in Ireland by ordering thatchild-abuse allegations be referred for criminal investigations. The ‘strictlyconfidential’ letter from Rome – leaked in January amid continuing inquiriesinto the Irish scandal – emphasized the priority of in-house handling of pedophiliacases under church, not civil, law.” (New York Times, January 31, 2011)How strongly the church obstructs a legal accounting of the sexual crimes of itspriests was directly experienced by one of the signatories in the case he handledof a victim of abuse. The victim was a woman who averred to having beensexually abused and raped as a child and young girl by a priest over severalyears. She became so traumatized by this that, for decades, she repressed theseoccurrences. Based on a clinical-psychological expert assessment of a scientist atthe Catholic University of Eichstätt, her allegations were deemed reliable. Inconsideration of this, the deputy president of the diocesan tribunal in Eichstättturned to the Würzburg bishop, Dr. Hofmann, responsible for the perpetrator –now deceased – with the indication that this was a “particularly grave and31

serious case of sexual abuse,” and the diocese should pay an appropriate compensation.When the diocese rejected this demand and tried to resolve the casewith the payment of a kind of “hush money,” the diocese was taken to court.During the proceedings, the bishop then put in a plea based on the statute oflimitations. Following, the signatory turned to the President of the GermanBishops Conference, Archbishop Dr. Zollitsch, with the request that the latter tryto get the accused bishop to drop the plea. This was denied. Once the court hadsignalized that the victim’s claim for compensation appeared to be justified, butthat a complete resolution failed due to the bishop’s plea of the statute oflimitations, the signatory turned to the pope and wrote letters on April 27, 2004and September 1, 2008, requesting the pope to help see that the resolution of thecase and the compensation of the victim by the diocese not be further obstructedby the legal trick of a plea based on the statute of limitations. Both lettersremained unanswered and the abuse victim lost in court because the churchcontinued to entrench itself behind the plea of the statute of limitations.The following is to be recorded as an interim finding: During the years from1981 to 2005, Joseph Ratzinger, as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine ofthe Faith, and, since then, as pope, directed a worldwide cover-up system, whichexempted ecclesiastical child abusers from criminal prosecution through statecourts, confronting them instead with only the measures of canon law, whichdid not hurt at all and led to the fact that, as a rule, the child abusers remained inoffice and obtained further opportunity to commit sexual offenses, which theydid. Robertson summarizes as follows: “The evidence establishes that at thedirection of the Vatican, wrongdoers were dealt with in a manner that protectedthem from exposure, silenced their victims, aided and abetted some to move onto commit further offences, and withheld evidence of their serious crimes fromlaw enforcement authorities. In effect, the church has been running a parallelsystem of criminal justice in many countries, unbeknownst to and deliberatelyhidden from the public, police and parliaments, in which the guilty wentunpunished and the lips of their victims were sealed – by forced oaths andconfidential legal settlements.” (cf. Robertson, op.cit., p. 2)32

2.3 The preferential treatment and reinstatement of the perpetratorsHowever, the cover-up of the crimes was not enough for Dr. Ratzinger. Insofaras there were church internal condemnations, he intervened again and again infavor of the perpetrators. He halted proceedings already in progress, revokedcondemnations or provided for the perpetrators in other ways.

An example of this is given in the case of the priest Lawrence Murphy fromWisconsin, who, from 1950 to 1974, had abused hundreds of deaf-mute children.When in 1996 his crimes became known to the bishop in charge of him, theArchbishop of Milwaukee, the latter wrote to Cardinal Ratzinger and asked forhis advice on what he should do with the priest. The letter remained unanswered.The archbishop again inquired and again received no answer. Aftereight months, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, who, as mentioned, was the secretary ofthe Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, initiated a secretcanonical process that could lead to Murphy’s dismissal. However, this processwas suddenly brought to a stop again. The child molester had personally writtento Cardinal Ratzinger and requested his “kind assistance.” The perpetrator wasnot dismissed; he died several years later and was buried in his priestlyvestments. (cf. Robertson, op.cit., p. 23; The New York Times on March 24, 2010,“Vatican Declined to Defrock U.S. Priest Who Abused Boys”;http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/25/world/europe/25vatican.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1)Cardinal Ratzinger had reacted similarly in 1981, the year he assumed the officeof Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. The Bishop ofOakland had urgently recommended that the priest Steffen Kiesle be dismissedfrom his office after he had actually been convicted in a criminal court formolesting two young boys. Ratzinger procrastinated for four years, despiteanxious and repeated requests on part of the bishop. In the end, because of thepriest’s ‘youth’ – he was 38 – he was allowed to continue his work with children.He was convicted again in 2004 for molesting a young girl; earlier acts hadmeanwhile come under the statute of limitations. (cf. Robertson, op.cit., p. 23;The Times from April 10, 2010: “Signature on letter implicates Pope in abusecover-up”). The Times wrote: “Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger resisted pleas from a33

Californian diocese to defrock a priest with a record of molesting children,putting ‘the good of the universal Church’ above other considerations, accordingto the 1985 letter.”(http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article7093936.ece)Further cases can be found in the Irish Murphy Commission report, whichdetermined that two pedophile priests who had abused children and weretherefore dismissed from the priesthood, appealed to Rome and in June 2002 hadtheir dismissal revoked by Rome. (Chapter 4.60;http://www.inis.gov.ie/en/JELR/Part%201.pdf/Files/Part%201.pdf)And in Australia, such behavior pattern from the Congregation for the Doctrineof the Faith led by Cardinal Ratzinger also became known. In one case, Romeintervened at the request of a priest from a family that had contributed heavilyto the church. After the priest was suspended for assaulting six women, theVatican pardoned him and directed that he be sent to another parish which wasnot told of his transgressions – and he transgressed again. (Robertson, op.cit., p.33; cf. more similar cases on www.theage.com.au, “Rome backed sex-case priest”by Martin Daly, 6 July 2002)

Regarding this behavior pattern, the Murphy Commission ascertained:“... It is clear that the suffering and the stress of victims was often related tothe fact that their abuser was still functioning as a cleric and might thereforebe a threat to other children … In practice, it appears to the Commission that,for a significant part of the period covered by the Commission, canon lawwas used selectively when dealing with offending clergy, [until the end of2008] to the benefit of the cleric and the consequent disadvantage of hisvictims. The Commission has not encountered a case where canon law wasinvoked as a means of doing justice to victims.” (Murphy Report, Chapter4.2, 4.3; http://www.inis.gov.ie/en/JELR/Part%201.pdf/Files/Part%201.pdf).The cases presented are only the tip of the iceberg, which proves to be a giganticcolossus consisting of the cover-up of crimes committed by the clergy, of34favoring the criminals to the injury of their victims. Robertson aptly summarizedthe atrocities that took place under the governance of Joseph Ratzinger, asArchbishop of Munich, as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of theFaith and as Pope, as follows:

a) “Tens of thousands, perhaps even a hundred thousand children andteenagers, mainly boys, have been sexually abused by the clergy, andmost have been caused serious and long-term psychological damage.b) Thousands of clergy, known to be guilty of very grave crimes of a kindwhich most perpetrators have a propensity to commit again, have notbeen defrocked. They have been harboured by the church, moved toother parishes or countries and protected from identification and fromtemporal punishment – usually a prison sentence – under Canon Lawprotocols that offer them forgiveness in this world as well as the next.c) The Holy See, a pseudo-state, has established a foreign law jurisdiction inother friendly states pursuant to which, in utter secrecy, it has dealt withsex abusers in a manner incompatible with, and in some respects contraryto, the law of the nation in which it operates, and has withheld evidenceof their guilt from law enforcement authorities.”(Robertson, op.cit., p. 164)

2.4 No end in sightNothing has changed regarding this either, as a result of the prevailing norms onserious crimes (“Normae de gravioribus delictis”) made known by the Vatican inJuly of 2010. As the press agency kath.net reported on July 15, 2010, with this,“for the first time, the complete regulations on how the Congregation for theDoctrine of the Faith deals with cases of abuse” were published. “These wereformerly based on unpublished pontifical mandates and internal rules. Somepoints of the already existing norms have been changed and stated more precisely,however, according to statements by the Vatican, they are, on the whole,largely in agreement with the procedures to date.” The period of limitation was35

changed, and in addition, the possession and distribution of child pornographyand the sexual abuse of the mentally handicapped were now identified asserious delicts. The relevant Article 6 of the published norms literally reads:

§ 1:“The more grave delicts against morals which are reserved to the Congregationfor the Doctrine of the Faith are:

1. the delict against the sixth commandment of the Decalogue committed bya cleric with a minor below the age of eighteen years; in this case, a personwho habitually lacks the use of reason is to be considered equivalent to aminor.

2. the acquisition, possession, or distribution by a cleric of pornographicimages of minors under the age of fourteen, for purposes of sexualgratification, by whatever means or using whatever technology;”

§ 2:“A cleric who commits the delicts mentioned above in § 1 is to be punishedaccording to the gravity of his crime, not excluding dismissal or deposition.”This rule signifies nothing more than the reinforcement of the legal situationexisting up until now. In particular, the obligation to maintain secrecy as statedin the letter from Cardinal Ratzinger on May 18, 2001 (“De gravioribus delictis”)still applies. Thus, sexual crimes committed by priests will still be kept undercover and the police will not be called in. In Article 30 of the published norms,the course of action to be taken in cases of abuse is expressly stated:

§ 1:“Cases of this nature are subject to the pontifical secret.”

§ 2:“Whoever has violated the secret, whether deliberately (ex dolo) or throughgrave negligence, and has caused some harm to the accused or to the witnesses,is to be punished with an appropriate penalty by the higher turns at theinsistence of the injured party or even ex officio.”(Robertson, ob.cit., pp. 202, 204)36

As the Vatican spokesman Lombardi explained, collaboration with the civilauthorities has been the subject of discussion in recent times, but was not dealtwith in the norms that have now been made public. He stated that “the Normsbeing published today are part of the penal code of canon law, which iscomplete in itself and entirely distinct from the law of States.” (Lombardi, “ONSIGNIFICANCE OF NEW NORMS,” zenith, 15 July 2010, http://www.zenit.org/article-29901?l=english) As much as he attempts to weaken thisautonomy by saying that in the “Guide to Understanding Basic CDF Proceduresconcerning Sexual Abuse Allegations” it says that “Civil law concerningreporting of crimes to the appropriate authorities should always be followed,” itdoes not help to advance things. For one thing, because often there is no legalduty to give notice of criminal offenses (as, for instance, in Germany), and foranother, because in countries where such a duty exists (as, for instance, inFrance), the church does not abide by this, as demonstrated by the abovementionedVatican laudatory letter to a French bishop, who refused to informthe civil authorities.

Thus, the fact remains that, as a rule, clerical sex criminals merely face proceedingsaccording to canon law, which puts child abuse in the same category ofcriminal offenses as “host desecration” or breaching the confessional secret orholding an unauthorized celebration of mass. In all these cases, it is foreseen innumber B3 of said “Guide” that “In cases where the accused priest has admittedto his crimes and has accepted to live a life of prayer and penance, the CDFauthorizes the local bishop to issue a decree prohibiting or restricting the publicministry of such a priest. … Administrative recourse to the CDF is possibleagainst such decrees.” (See: http://www.vatican.va/resources/resources_guide-CDF-procedures_en.html)

What then happens has already been described: Dismissals are rescinded andpriests are reinstalled in office. Robertson therefore correctly states in summarythat the Vatican works with a “parallel, para-statal jurisdiction,” which forgives“sins that host states punish as crimes.” In reference to the “ratlines” that theVatican made available to Nazi criminals for making their escape to South37

America, he writes: “… but the real ‘ratline’ that it has been offering is an escaperoute for child sex abusers – not so much as a ‘get out of gaol free’ card, as afreedom never to be at risk of gaol. Through a mixture of arrogance, negligenceand recklessness borne of belief in its state immunity and its overweening desireto be a political actor on the world stage, the Pope and his army of cardinals,nuncios, archbishops and officials have run a church in which children havebeen suffering widespread and systematic abuse.” (Robertson, op.cit., p. 166)

2.5 A crime against humanity

According to Art. 7(1)(g) (of the ICC Statute) included therein are “rape, sexualslavery … or any other form of sexual violence of comparable gravity”[“individual acts”], provided that they are “committed as part of a widespreador systematic attack directed against any civilian population, with knowledge ofthe attack [‘multiple commission of acts’].”

2.5.1 As presented above, child abuse often took place in the form of rape.Insofar as other variations of sexual abuse of children by priests are involved,they are, in any case, to be attributed to the definitional elements of “any otherform of sexual violence of comparable gravity.” The superior force of the priest,based on his authority on the one hand, and the young age of the victim on theother, makes it equal to the term “violence,” even when it does not involve “visabsoluta” (absolute violence). The victim, a child who looks up to the priest as aman of God, is, when it has been placed in a home from which it cannot flee, andfor all practical purposes, defenselessly at his mercy, round the clock.

2.5.2 Concerning the “gravity” of violence, one should bear in mind that sexualabuse of children and youth by a priest, no matter whether committed withcompulsive or absolute violence, leads to the gravest impairment of the mentaland physical health of the victims. They are often severely traumatized for yearsand decades and seriously impaired in the development of their personality fortheir whole life. Sexual abuse of children is a kind of soul murder. At the sametime, it is an “attack on human dignity or grave humiliation” in the words of the38explanatory memorandum of the International Criminal Court. (cf. alsoRobertson, op.cit., p. 137 f; http://www.preventgenocide.org/law/icc/statute/part-a.htm#2).

The abuse is also especially infamous because it is committed by members of aninstitution that bases itself on Jesus of Nazareth, who, as is known, said: “Let thechildren come to me, and do not hinder them; for to such belongs the kingdomof God.” (Luke 18:16) This creates a very special trust, within which childrenwere sexually abused.

2.5.3 As extensively described above, the sexual abuse of children took place notonly in individual cases, but also in a large number of countries over decades,committed on thousands, perhaps even hundreds of thousands, of victims. Thus,these attacks were “widespread” in the meaning of the penal provision.This alone would already be sufficient to have to assume a “multiple commissionof acts” in the meaning of Art. 7 of the ICC Statute. The attacks, however,also occurred “systematically.” According to more recent jurisdiction, noplan or political element is necessary for this. (cf. Werle, Völkerstrafrecht [Principlesof International Criminal Law],

2. Ed., in reference to Yugoslavia CriminalCourt from Feb. 22, 2001 [Kuranac et.al., TC, para. 429]). Child abuse wascommitted by many priests at the same time through ever recurring abusive actsin certain church facilities on the same or on varying victims and under theprotection of a systematic cover-up and preferential treatment of the perpetratorsby the Vatican.

2.5.4 The definitional element of an “attack against any civilian population” isalso fulfilled. According to the legal definition of Art. 7(2)(a) ICCSt., as explainedabove, this is then the case when it is the “course of conduct involving themultiple commission of acts referred to in paragraph 1 against any civilianpopulation, pursuant to or in furtherance of a State or organizational policy tocommit such attack.”39

(1) The civilian population in the meaning of this provision is every body ofpersons that is connected via common characteristics, which makes them thetarget of the acts which, in their totality, amounts to an attack (cf. Werle, op.cit.,

Margin Note 756 in reference to May 7, 1997 [Tadic, TC, para. 644]). In thepresent case, the body of persons with common characteristics is children andyouth, above all of the male gender, who became the preferred victims of serialsexual crimes committed by pedophilic Catholic priests.

(2) The large number of individual acts also constitutes an “attack” in themeaning of the statutory offense. The fact that the statute understands this tomean the “course of conduct” which occurs “pursuant to or in furtherance of …organizational policy”… does not mean that a literal, programmatic determinationof the target of an attack must exist. Here, too, we may refer to the Tadicdecision of the Yugoslavian Criminal Court (Hereafter YCC):

“(s)uch a policy need not be formalized and can be deduced from the wayin which the acts occur. Notably, if the acts occur on a widespread orsystematic basis that demonstrates a policy to commit those acts, whetherformalized or not.”

Thus, it depends on the circumstances as a whole under which the acts werecommitted. Above all, when they were committed on a “widespread orsystematic basis,” this indicates a “policy to commit these acts.” This policy canalso consist of the toleration of the acts (cf. Werle, op.cit., Margin Note 777 inreference to international jurisdiction): YCC, judgment of January 14, 2000(Kupreskic et al., TC), para. 552 (“at least tolerated”); YCC, judgment of July 15,1999 (Tadic, AC), para. 145; likewise Art. 2 para. 11 Draft Code 1954; UNDoc.S/1994/674/Add.2 (Vol.I), Annexes to the Final Report of the Commissionof Experts Established Pursuant To Security Council Resolution 780 (1992) v.Mai 31, 1995, Annex II: Rape and Sexual Assault, para. 33: “It also has proven ...that the state is involved. This can be concluded from state tolerance.”

The organization that tolerated the crimes is the church. However, it has notonly tolerated, but facilitated them, through canon law and its implementation,which led to the fact that child abusers were not seriously punished. The broad40

basis for the act, which is referred to in the decision of the Yugoslavia CriminalCourt, is the worldwide assignment of priests to pastoral care, during whichthey come into contact with children and youth and abuse them. The pastoralassignment was directed by the local bishops; the sexual abuse during thisassignment that took place ten thousandfold to one hundred thousandfold wasdirected by the Vatican: after the act, by way of cover-up and the transfer of theperpetrators, before the act, by way of cover-up and the transfer of previousperpetrators, which virtually promised subsequent perpetrators immunity fromprosecution and encouraged them to new acts. A regular “management” ofsexual crimes took place: With their workplace, the perpetrators were providedwith a place to commit the crime; after the act, instead of being charged by thestate prosecutor, they received “priestly words of comfort,” and if need be, wereprovided, for good measure, with a getaway spot to go underground. This, too,is “policy” in the meaning of the penal provision, for here, with the help of acentral leadership function, circumstances are created, designed and promoted,under which the many individual acts are committed, which then amount to themultiple commission of acts of worldwide abuses of children committed bypriests.

2.6 The criminal responsibility of Dr. Ratzinger

When priests working worldwide on behalf of their church commit sexualcrimes, the situation is similar to that of soldiers who run amok and whosecrimes then go to the account of their commander-in-chief, even when he did notwant such crimes and was thousands of kilometers away. In this connection,Robertson correctly points out a decision of the US Supreme Court in a caseinvolving General Yamashita, the Japanese general whose troops ran amok inthe Philippines. The objection of the general that “he was a hundred miles awayfrom the scene and had no wish for and was outraged by the rapes and otheratrocities” committed by his soldiers was met by the Supreme Court with thestatement that a person in a superior position is responsible when he neglectedto prevent the unlawful behavior of his subordinates, when he knew that hisinferiors had committed or were in the process of committing such, and when he41

did not take the necessary steps to prevent this or to punish those whocommitted the offenses. Literally:

“A person in a position of superior authority should be held individuallyresponsible for giving the unlawful order to commit a crime, and he shouldalso be held responsible for failure to deter the unlawful behaviour ofsubordinates if he knew they had committed or were about to commit crimesyet failed to take the necessary and reasonable steps to prevent theircommission or to punish those who had committed them.”(Robertson, op.cit., p. 139)

This responsibility is also expressed in Art. 28 of the ICC Statute, which, accordingto para. b, also applies to civilian superiors. According to this, a superior iscriminally responsible for crimes, which were “committed by subordinatesunder his or her effective authority and control, as a result of his or her failure toexercise control properly over such subordinates, where:

i) The superior either knew, or consciously disregarded informationwhich clearly indicated, that the subordinates were committing orabout to commit such crimes;

ii) The crimes concerned activities that were within the effectiveresponsibility and control of the superior; andiii) The superior failed to take all necessary and reasonable measureswithin his or her power to prevent or repress their commission or tosubmit the matter to the competent authorities for investigation andprosecution.”

2.6.1 It is true that the individual priest is not formally in service to the Vatican,but to his bishopric. In fact, however, the following applies: When he commits asexual delict and his bishop learns of this, then, according to the above describedhierarchical structures between the Vatican and the bishoprics, the act has to bereported to the Vatican and to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faithrespectively. It is then in charge of the proceedings, by which it either conveys asanctioning of the act to the bishop or, what usually occurs, claims jurisdictionover the case. In the case of a sexual crime, the initially only indirect relationshipbetween the priest and the church as a whole proves to be a direct superiorsubordinaterelationship. The bishop, who has to report the criminal offense to42

Rome, no longer has any discretionary power concerning the priest’s fate; thiswill be determined directly from Rome, via binding instructions to the bishop.And in Rome, the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith andthe pope, respectively, bear the responsibility.

This responsibility of a superior for the individual priests who were delinquentor are in danger of becoming delinquent – for the first time or for repeated times– is not eliminated on grounds that child abuse is not part of a priest’s actualtasks, but takes place by malfeasance. Decisive is that, as a rule, he commits thisact within his scope of ministry, which makes it at all possible for him to comeinto close contact with children and youth. Significantly, many dioceses in theUnited States and Ireland took out liability insurance against impending claimsfor compensation from cases of abuse. They started this in the 1980s, when moreand more cases of abuse became known, whereby they did not, in part, reveal tothe insurance companies how many cases already existed at the time the contractwas concluded. In this way, for a premium of approximately 50,000 Euros, theIrish dioceses received insurance benefits amounting to almost 13 million. (cf.www.irishtimes.com from Feb. 8, 2011; Murphy-Report, section 1.21 M) In thecase of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, the insurance company refused to coverthe claims for damages on the grounds that the diocese did not reveal the truesituation at the time the contract was concluded. (cf. www.necn.com from Nov.23, 2010)

2.6.2 Dr. Joseph Ratzinger was extensively informed regarding thetotality of the worldwide sexual crimes committed by Catholic priests, first asPrefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith since 1981, and as popesince 2005. Based on this information, he acted by issuing orders for secrecy, byseizing jurisdiction over proceedings or by bringing proceedings to a halt, byrepealing convictions of lower instances and by approving the transfer ofdelinquent priests into other parishes or other countries. Through his order ofsecrecy, he saw to it that the sexual crimes were not reported to the state lawenforcement authorities; he even approved the commendation of a bishop, whohad transgressed against the obligation of disclosure by law in his country andwas therefore punished by a state court. He initiated no effective measures43

whatsoever against the continuation of widespread sexual crimes by his priests,but, on the contrary, legally and in actual fact, created a situation, in which itwas easy for priests to abuse children, because they did not have to expect anyserious punishment, as was already extensively presented above. He upholdsthis situation to this very day, thus abetting new sexual crimes on a daily basis,which continue to be covered up and are uncovered either not at all or only afterseveral years. To learn the details, the prosecuting authority would have to askthe Vatican for their records. Normally in such a case, a legal search warrantwould be obtained.

If one takes into consideration the behavior of the accused, past and present, onewould have to even qualify his criminal complicity in the worldwide crimescommitted by his priests as aiding and abetting. In any case, according to Art. 28of the ICC Statute, as the superior of the perpetrators, he is responsible for themunder criminal law.

2.6.3 He also acted culpably in the meaning of Art. 30 of the ICC Statute, becausehe was aware that the cover-up strategy he ordered and continuously condonedhad resulted in aiding and abetting further sexual crimes. In any case, heapproved this to protect the reputation of his institution – at the expense of evernew victims of his pedophile priests. This kind of behavior requires severepunishment, which the accused himself also has to acknowledge, since heconstantly uses the words of Jesus, who said, among other things: “…whoevercauses one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to havea great millstone fastened round his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea.”(Mathew 18:6)

IV. On the Admissibility of the Proposed Charge

1. According to Art. 27 of the ICC Statute, all persons are subject to the jurisdiction

of the International Criminal Court, regardless of their official capacity.“In particular, official capacity as a Head of State or Government … shall in nocase exempt a person from criminal responsibility under this Statute …” (para.44

1) “Immunities ..., which may attach to the official capacity of a person, whetherunder national or international law, shall not bar the Court from exercising itsjurisdiction over such a person.” (para. 2)

Thus, Dr. Joseph Ratzinger cannot exempt himself from the jurisdiction of theInternational Criminal Court by indicating he is a Head of State, not to mentionwhether this objection would be recognized at all by a court committed tointernational law. When bearing in mind that the Vatican’s statehood is based ona contract with the dictator Mussolini in 1929, this is dubious under internationallaw. (cf. Robertson, op.cit., p. 63 ff)

2. The further prerequisite, according to which the person accused and to becharged has to belong to a state that is among the contract parties of the ICCStatute, is also given. Contrary to the Vatican, Germany has ratified the treatypertaining to the International Criminal Court (on Dec. 11, 2002). Dr. Ratzinger isa German citizen, since he did not give up his German citizenship upon theacquisition of his Vatican citizenship.

3. According to the Preamble of the ICC Statute, the International CriminalCourt operates not only in a subsidiary role to jurisdiction between states, but“complements” these.

According to Art. 17(1)(a) ICCSt., the admissibility of a charge before theInternational Criminal Court would not be given only if Germany were alreadycarrying out investigations or if Germany were “unwilling or unable genuinelyto carry out the investigation or prosecution.” Investigations into the crimesagainst humanity that have been charged here have not taken place in Germanyand will not take place, either. The German state prosecutors are bound by theinstructions of the Minister of Justice. In a country whose Federal President willreceive the pope on a state visit this year and whose politicians even fulfill theunusual desire of the pope to speak before Parliament as a guest of the state, noMinister of Justice will allow a state prosecutor investigations or even a preferralof charges against the pope. Independent of this, such a charge would also notbe possible, because according to Art. 25 of the German Constitution, the pope is45

not subject to German jurisdiction as long as he is considered a Head of State.Despite the dubiousness of the acquisition of this diplomatic status, no stateprosecutor in Germany would dare to throw doubt on it.

4. Nor can the accused object to the legitimacy of proceedings before theInternational Criminal Court on grounds that “the case is not of sufficientgravity to justify further action by the Court (Art. 17(1)(d) ICCSt.).”As presented above, the accused is to be charged with the fact that he playeddown, covered up and, in a church system parallel to state penal law, largelydetracted from punishment tens of thousands, perhaps even hundreds ofthousands, of cases of child abuse committed by Catholic priests, thus supportingthis for years. In addition, by forbidding the use of condoms, he is alsocharged with contributing to the physical injury and killing of an undeterminednumber of African Catholics and abetting them at the same time to infect non-Catholics, as well. Finally, he is charged with the fact that the terrifying regimeof his church jeopardizes or injures the physical and mental health of a largenumber of people worldwide.

The approving acceptance of massive deaths from AIDS as a result of an HIVinfection and the support of massive soul murder by way of sexual violencecommitted against children and youth is so grave that their investigation and theexamination of whether these are crimes against humanity, according to thePreamble of the ICC Statute as well as according to the Policy Paper of prosecutingauthorities, is called for. According to this, the prosecuting authorityshould focus their investigations on those who bear the greatest responsibility,as, for example, the leaders of states or organizations, who are responsible forcrimes against humanity. (Policy Paper II. 2.1).46

V. Summation

1. When the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court came into effecton July 1, 2002, this initiated a turn in the culture of mankind. The times inwhich politically and ideologically motivated crimes on a massive scale remainedunpunished, because they were not subsumable under the conventionalstatutory offenses of murder, unlawful detention and assault, have come to anend. The crime against humanity as defined in the Rome Statute not onlypertains to the widespread masses of acts and the criminal responsibility of theringleaders, but also expanded the spectrum of objects of legal protection: In Art.7(1)(k) liable for punishment are “inhumane acts … intentionally causing greatsuffering or serious injury to mental health …” provided that these injuries aresimilarly grave as, for instance rape, enslavement or abduction. With this,emotional violence, which can lead to damaging a person’s health, is alsoincluded. Much of the customary violence of this world that was accepted,because “that’s how it always was,” now also becomes relevant within theframework of the Rome Statute.

2. The charges at hand come to the conclusion that this applies to the coercivesystem of the Roman Catholic Church, which is led by the accused, and to theterrifying threats of the eternal torments of hell associated with it. These threatslead countless people into an irrational psychological and mental dependency,robbing them of the ability to make their own decisions of conscience in all areasof their life. It is only because of this coercive system that the two other chargedcrimes against humanity were made at all possible. A penal evaluation of thischurch regime, that exerts utmost psychological pressure, is all the more calledfor, since the accused attempts to divert attention from the totalitarianism of hissystem by praising freedom of religion all over the place, which his own churchtramples underfoot – as well as by the treatment of his own members andthrough the aggressive intolerance toward religious competitors, above all,when they are religious minorities.

47

3. In addition, the charge comes to the conclusion that the accused is criminallyand jointly responsible for the death of hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions,of people who died of AIDS, because, despite the rampant epidemic, he adheresto the church forbiddance of protective measures against the transmission of theHIV virus, enforcing it with the threats of his coercive system.

4. Finally, the charge comes to the conclusion that the accused is criminallyresponsible for the rising escalation of sexual crimes committed by Catholicpriests in recent decades. In public, the accused plays the role of the God-fearingleader of the church, who apologizes to the victims of clerical child abusers andwants to prevent further acts. In reality, he acts like the ice-cold patron of aworldwide cover-up system, which favors the criminals at the expense of theirvictims and daily aids and abets new crimes.

Based on the internal means of coercion of the church, it must be assumed thatthis system will continue indefinitely and that the worldwide crimes madepossible by it will continue for an unforeseeable time, that the courts in allcountries will be deceived again and again and that the crimes will remainunpunished, and that new suffering will be inflicted upon thousands andthousands of children over and over again – if an international court does notcall a halt to these crimes by holding accountable those responsible for them.Joseph Ratzinger is the principle offender, surrounded by a number of accompliceswhose names have already been partially mentioned. The time is ripefor the prosecutor at the International Criminal Court to initiate investigations,and that what was formerly known only fragmentally be comprehensivelyclarified and the church sponsors of worldwide child abuse be brought beforethe court.

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Danish cartoonist (of Mohammed) drew John Paul II holding up robes of altar boys to expose their BUTTS to SATIATE his bestial PAPAL JP2 Army - John Paul II Pedophile Priests Army who sodomized hundreds of thousands of little boys - with inscription - I am against homosexuality but for pedophilia. Read the vision of Paris Arrow on how Saint Michael the Archangel tied the giant millstone on John Paul II's neck at his last WYD in 2002 -- in the John Paul II Millstone post August 1, 2006. John Paul II's neck broke and Saint Michael threw him into a raging sea of fire... The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil
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